Status Updates From Emergency Brake

started on feb. 14

"I think I'm done
being a dimmer switch,
because it's October,
and I'm touching your face,
which feels like a face."

"Maybe I can still be something like
the lens of a camera,
the space between what you see
and what you get."

"There's a difference between loving someone
and letting someone you love obliterate herself
though I'm not sure what that difference is."

"Despite what anyone tells you,
two people can touch without touching."

"what is it anyway about hearing someone you love
speak your name
that's like being rocked back and forth,
is there anything more sacred
than that person's mouth"

"a person can fall down her own shadow"

"I don't know what scares me more -
the white noise inside the body
or the quiet."

"I am always running toward
or away from myself."

"God's apology is orgasm"

"Once, everything I wanted to know
came down to sex or suffering"

"Think about space. Imagine the shadow
of the planet whose atmosphere
is the color of what you hate most
about yourself, whose rings are the hips
of the woman you picture when you are asked
to picture death. What does she keep
in her pocket? What is the taste
of your name in her mouth?"

"Here is the question
of where I will land or if."

"When I open, I want to be the umbrella,
not the pocketknife."

"I want my name to amount to more
than a bone passed between two dogs."

"Anyone who says
they don't want to be celebrated
is lying. We all want champagne corks
praising each slip knot
of the tongue, each the launch code
for another bottle rocket to fire,
streaking across the sky
the way a peeled back dress slices the dark."

"There is something about cheap wine and leather jackets"

"When I remember the past as burglary,
I think the body is a door, and what is a door
but a crime scene waiting to happen,
the way a needle waits to happen to a vein."

"all my life I've been about as carefree as a soft peach in a pile of broken glass"